Topical Punch: Health Topics as Drivers of Idiosyncratic Reader Responses to Online News

Although scholars explore how news stories’ framing elements may affect reader responses, they have yet to examine how the topics of health-related articles affect those responses. By content analyzing three US newspapers’ online health content and reader comments, this study finds that certain health topics are idiosyncratic with reader responses. Readers reacted to personal health and obesity news with more episodic and gain-framed comments but relied more on loss frames when discussing chronic health issues. Readers also used more thematic frames in comments about mental illness. Health coverage related to politics and the government was associated with fewer episodic comments.